Quantum Weirdness

DangerousBeliefs said:


I thought I was clear, but apparently wasn't. I meant the NUTTY claims using QM... like say telepathy is possible and QM proves it!

Without some better input from Hunter, it's hard to decide what exactly he's talking about.
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Ahh.

Ok. Sorry, that was so like not clear.

Yes, the psionic-type nutty claims that use QM as an excuse are, well, emipheral at the best, when you try to show them.
 
I am starting to think that the wave function doesn't really collapse, it remains a wave function, if that particle is not absorbed.

The wave function gives the probablity of where a particle will be, what collapses the function is our poking it with another particle.

It remains a wave throughout, or am I way off base?

I hate the whole 'observer' thing as well, when you do the two slit experiment you can't shrink down and watch the electrons go by, you have to put a magnet or something there which interacts with the electron as it goes by. So it is not the 'observation' that changes the wave function but the interaction used to make the observation.
 
jj said:
Yes, the psionic-type nutty claims that use QM as an excuse are, well, emipheral at the best, when you try to show them.
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Ephemeral? :)

Anyway, perhaps my question isn't completely off topic here, and I post it because there seems to be a number of people reading this who might perhaps take the time to give a sort of comprehensible reply.

Unsurprisingly, homoeopathy is right up there in the ranks of the nuttiness that drags QM in as a suggested mode of action. It's not trivial, because there are papers there to be cited which look credible to the uninitiated....
Researchers are investigating other areas of science in attempts to understand this intriguing phenomenon. L. R. Milgrom (of the Department of Chemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine), for instance, proposes a non-local metaphor for homoeopathy, based on quantum physics, in which the potentised medicine, the patient and the practitioner are seen as forming "a non-local therapeutically entangled triad, qualitatively described in terms of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics".

This is the sort of research which may well help us to understand what might otherwise be deemed "magic".
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This is the sort of thing which those of us who try to argue the idiocy of homoeopathy in medical journals have to put up with.

The three papers the author quoted above is citing are to be found here:

Milgrom, 2002

Milgrom, 2003a

Milgrom, 2003b

Another which doesn't seem to be taking quite the same line (and which doesn't admit to being a "metaphor" either) is Weingärtner, 2003.

Two more authors who seem to concentrate more on the effect of the mind or intent of the practitioner, but who nevertheless invoke QM once again in their ravings, are Thoresen, 2003 and Walach, 2000.

I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could find the patience to look at some of these (principally Weingärtner and Milgrom) and try to comment without using too many smilies and sweary-words :) .

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:

Ephemeral? :)


I'm trying to find a polite way to describe what a 19th century farmer used to spread on his fields...


I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could find the patience to look at some of these (principally Weingärtner and Milgrom) and try to comment without using too many smilies and sweary-words :) .

Rolfe.
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Sorry, not me, the spluttering that starts on page one renders me mostly incomprehensible.

About all that comes to mind is the :rolleyes: ikon. Oh man, um, no that's NOT what QM is...
 
jj said:
I'm trying to find a polite way to describe what a 19th century farmer used to spread on his fields...
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Not ephemeral then. Hmmm. Excreta? Manure? Fertiliser? B*llsh*t? Sorry, even my spellchecker is silent on this one.
jj said:
About all that comes to mind is the :rolleyes: ikon. Oh man, um, no that's NOT what QM is....
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I know, I know, but the uninitiated tend to want rather more detail. (The last time I asked this, the most coherent reply I got was "Barking". Closely followed by "Dagenham East", which for anyone not intimately familiar with the stylised map of the London Underground, is three stops beyond Barking.)

Rolfe.
 
hammegk said:
I recall an increase from 10 to 11. Which version is up to 12?
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If my memory serves me well, it was 10 spacial dimensions (3 macroscopic spacial dimensions and 7 "curled up" microscopic spacial dimensions) plus time making up the 11th.

BillyJoe.
 
Peter Soderqvist said:
David Deutsch multiverse theory, as described in Julian Browns book, Minds, Machines and the Multiverse, the Quest for the Quantum Computer, Deutsch experiment in the future will be a breaking point, because its experiment will reveal if "his" decoherence is true, or wave function collapse is true!
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I have read about the Multiverse theory in Deutsch's book The Fabric of Reality. I thought the book was fascinating and the multiverse view makes a lot of sense when you look at the bigger picture.

However, I am not a fan of his arrogant style. He writes too much like a woo-woo. He tries to state that the multiverse interpretation has to be true, and there is no way he could be possibly be wrong.

He is wrong, or being intellectually dishonest.
 
CurtC said:
I was also about to ask for a cite for the one part in 10^42 claim. I've heard it as one part in 10^10, which is still astoundingly accurate. And it's not that we've observed some disagreement at that level, but that's as accurate as we can make our measurements.
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Just trying to find you one - it originally came from a friend of mine who does supersymmetric phenomenology, so I assumed he knew what he was talking about. Let me get back to you...

Rich
 
hammegk said:



The claim was "For those that like numbers, QM makes predictions that are accurate to 1 part in 10^42.".

Please demonstrate where Feynman agrees; I didn't find it.
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Increasing levels of accuracy - atomic clocks (5 parts in 10^5):
http://whyfiles.org/078time/2.html

I can't source the original claim, so I'll withdraw it until I can.
 
Humphreys said:


I have read about the Multiverse theory in Deutsch's book The Fabric of Reality. I thought the book was fascinating and the multiverse view makes a lot of sense when you look at the bigger picture.

However, I am not a fan of his arrogant style. He writes too much like a woo-woo. He tries to state that the multiverse interpretation has to be true, and there is no way he could be possibly be wrong.

He is wrong, or being intellectually dishonest.
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Soderqvist1: I have read The Fabric of Reality!
I think it is because he is a proponent who has invested a lot of time, energy, and prestige in his stance! Richard Dawkins is also an eager proponent for his way of reasoning, well based in my opinion! Paul Davies and John Gribbin are softer in their expositions, because they have nothing to lose in the competition race between different interpretations. Amit Goswami has been a professor of physics at the Oregon University in the last 30 years, and he is equally certain in the opposite direction, namely: that consciousness collapses the quantum wave function, and matter is a epiphenomenon of consciousness! Here is an interview with Goswami about it! I have read his book, The Self-Aware Universe!

Scientific Proof of the Existence of God An Interview with Amit Goswami!
http://www.twm.co.nz/goswintro.htm

Anyway, there are strange things going on in our universe, take the Bohr atom as illustration! A quantum jump is a discontinuous transformation of energy; an electron doesn't exist between energy levels or orbits. An outer orbiting electron in a high energetic state, in standing wave of probability distribution of Eigenstates, releases a amount of quanta, and thus jumps down closer to the nucleus, counter intuitive enough; this electron disappear at the outer orbit, and reappear closer to the nucleus without traveling between, hence; discontinuous! Where is the electron when it is in the discontinuous phase, I mean what kind of place is that, or where is it?????

Have you read The Self-Aware Universe?
 
I wish I knew what the experimental evidence is for all this. But I suspect I wouldn't understand even if I was told. Still, "we did this, and that meter needle moved by that amount," would be good to know.

I'm still here is anyone wants to try to comment on Milgrom and/or Weingärtner (previous page now). Milgrom at least seems to be on to consciousness having some sort of a quantum effect at the macroscopic level. A.k.a. magic, in my dictionary.

Rolfe.
 
Peter Soderqvist said:
because they have nothing to lose in the competition race between different interpretations.
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I do see your point on Deutsch needing to sound certain in order to make his interpretation sound more plausible. If I were in his position - offering a view that must compete with the others - I guess I may act/write the same.

Don't get me wrong, I think Deutsch is a genius, and loved the book. It's just that his style doesn't instill confidence in me.

Peter Soderqvist said:
Have you read The Self-Aware Universe?
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Sorry, no. Do you reccomend it? Which interpretation do you prefer?

I have mostly read articles/books on the Parellel Universes interpretation as it made the most sense to me. I find it hard to bring myself to accept that consciousness could have any affect.

As Rolfe said, this seems too much like magic.
 
I am short of time here!

Soderqvist1, Sodervist2, Soderqvist3, ad infinitum in the multiverse is like magic too!
I belong to the camp, which consider consciousness as collapser of wave function! I suffer from wishful thinking like all other proponents does, but I think that Carl Sagan's, book The Demon-Haunted World, especially the chapter, Marriage of Skepticism and wonder is a thoughtful moderator! I read my opponents' books! ;)
 
That's helpful, Humphreys, thank you. Of course I knew about the experiment in relation to light itself, but not about the ramifications relating to particle forms.

However, I'm still no closer to understanding why that proves that homoeopaths aren't deluded when they declare that remedies which have been shown to have no effect in blinded trials nevertheless "work" very well in the one-to-one situation of the clinic. :nope:

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
However, I'm still no closer to understanding why that proves that homoeopaths aren't deluded when they declare that remedies which have been shown to have no effect in blinded trials nevertheless "work" very well in the one-to-one situation of the clinic. :nope:

Rolfe.
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Ah, but if you understood the Multiverse Interpretation of QM then you would :D
 
Rolfe said:
However, I'm still no closer to understanding why that proves that homoeopaths aren't deluded when they declare that remedies which have been shown to have no effect in blinded trials nevertheless "work" very well in the one-to-one situation of the clinic.
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I had a discussion with some friends last night about this. One of them pointed out that the whole point of any medicine, is to make people feel better. If people who take homeopathic remedies believe that has benefited them, then, by definition, homeopathy 'works'.

Not everything is open to science. In the arts - music, theatre, fiction books, etc., this is acknowledged. My friend used the analogy of clothing fashion and house decor. If you don't chastise people for wearing certain clothes, or decorating their houses in certain ways, why should you chastise them for buying small bottles of water? He applied a similar argument to comparing the suppliers of homeopathic remedies, with the suppliers of fashion clothing, cosmetics and the like.

Interesting, I thought.
 
hammegk said:



The claim was "For those that like numbers, QM makes predictions that are accurate to 1 part in 10^42.".
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Nope, I was wrong. Sorry. 5 parts in 10^15 is the best I can offer.
 
ceptimus said:
IIf people who take homeopathic remedies believe that has benefited them, then, by definition, homeopathy 'works'.
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I'm a vet. I don't give a monkey's what "people" do to themselves, but when they start deluding themselves that magic water is a substitute for effective medicine for their innocent animals, I see red. :a2:

And in spite of what the homoeopaths will tell their marks, there is no objective evidence whatsoever that magic water has any therapeutic effect on animals. It merely appears to delude the owners into imagining an improvement (sometimes).

Rolfe.
 
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